EDITORIAL: Sandy and the new normal

This Oct. 30 photo provided by New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority shows a flooded escalator in the South Ferry station of the No. 1 subway line, in lower Manhattan, after Superstorm Sandy passed through New York.(AP Photo/Metropolitan Transportation Authority)

Hurricane Irene chewed us up and spat us out last year.

While we were still on hands and knees in the dark, trying to recover, we suffered the further humiliation of having to listen to some New York City commentators and residents huff and puff about how unnecessarily alarmist weather forecasters and emergency management personnel had been.

A little rain never hurt anyone.

You won't hear us saying that now that Hurricane Sandy has passed us by.

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Yes, there's plenty of inconvenience yet to overcome and no one is minimizing that Kerhonkson resident Doreen Richardson, 69, lost her life in the storm.

But we know that, collectively, we were but grazed by Sandy's full fury.

And, as we recover from the latest natural disaster, we fully appreciate the hardships still ahead for New York City, New Jersey and points west in the direct path of Sandy.

The resources of the state and federal governments should and must be mobilized to assist with the recovery.

On another note, we were impressed by a couple of things about this storm.

First, the meteorologists really nailed it.

Days ahead of time, they credibly predicted both the likely course of Hurricane Sandy and the likelihood of merging with a cold jet stream bending down into Appalachia from Canada.

That kind of predictive capability is invaluable.

Second, while it's early for a full assessment, we are impressed at first blush by the degree of preparation by government, utilities and average citizens along the Eastern Seaboard. Nobody seemed to have been caught flat-footed, despite the historic challenge of the event.

It's no easy thing, for instance, to get metropolitan New Yorkers, of all people, to follow instructions. But, by and large, they got off city streets.

Despite the vast call upon resources, utilities did a good job of recruiting and pre-positioning help from across the country.

Hopefully, restoration will be quick.

Finally, it seems like maybe we've reached a transformative moment.

More likely than not, prevailing weather conditions have changed and maybe it's time we respond.

As Gov. Andrew Cuomo put it Tuesday, "We have a 100-year flood every two years now."

Cuomo summarized the challenge facing us as "a new reality when it comes to these weather patterns. We have an old infrastructure and we have old systems and that is not a good combination.

"I'm hopeful that not only will we rebuild (New York City) and metropolitan area, but use this as an opportunity to build it back smarter. There have been a series of extreme weather events. That is not a political statement; that is a factual statement. Anyone who says there is not a change in weather patterns is denying reality."